David Jalufka, 62, visits with the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo with his two grandsons, Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013. The former Karnes County sheriff spent three decades with the Department of Public Safety before being elected sheriff in 2004. Losing the last election, Jalufka has seen the tremendous change the county has undergone with the demands brought on by Eagle Ford Shale play.

Photo By Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News

Holding his grandson, Rancher Jalufka, 7, former Karnes County Sheriff David Jalufka, 62, sits next to his son, Gabe Jalufka, 37, while watching steer judging at the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo, Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013. Jalufka spent three decades with the Department of Public Safety before being elected sheriff in 2004. Jalufka has seen the tremendous change the county has undergone with the demands brought on by Eagle Ford Shale play.

Photo By Jerry Lara / San Antonio Express-News

With the oil boom lighting the night horizon, Charlie Lobner, 19, arrives home at the family ranch outside Kenedy after a long day at work.

Photo By Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News

Charlie Lobner, 19, talks with his mother, Mary Lobner, 49, after he arrives home to the family ranch outside Kenedy, Texas, Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2013. Lobner worked a 12-hour shift with Rock Water Energy Services. A year ago, Lobner was the point guard for the Kenedy Lions. He decided to work the Eagle Ford Shale play and is grossing between $8,000 to $10,000 a month.

Photo By Jerry Lara / San Antonio Express-News

Erica De La Garza, 35, watches traffic on the always-busy Main Street in Kenedy, which was a ghost town when she left years ago.

Photo By Jerry Lara / San Antonio Express-News

The Ramirezes fear that if they lose their rented home in Runge, they might not find another one they can afford.

Sketches of the lives of some of those affected by the dramatic transformation of Karnes County in the wake of Eagle Ford Shale drilling.

David Jalufka

Ex-lawman saw sheriff’s office go from sleepy department to one that gets no rest.

Arriving at Barth's, a popular Kenedy eatery, former Sheriff David Jalufka glanced around as though seeing it for the first time.

“I used to walk into this restaurant, and I could shake everyone's hand. I walk in here now and I don't know anyone. And you almost need a concierge to get a table now,” he said.

“It's real strange. You have all these men and no families,” he said, referring to the oil field workers.

Jalufka, 62, spent three decades as a state trooper. He came home to Karnes County and was elected sheriff in 2004. Last fall, he lost his bid for a third term to Constable Dwayne Villanueva.

“We went from hardly doing anything, a few burglaries and a lot of cattle-on-the-road calls,” Jalufka recalled. Back then the county was always broke and cutting corners.

“It was like someone cut on a switch in 2010. Traffic got real heavy. The clientele in the beer joints picked up,” he said.

Suddenly the calls included fatal accidents, fights, DWIs, stabbings and even shootings.

“We have a 12-bed jail, and we were running 100 to 120 people through there a month. Our sexual-offender registry jumped from about 40 to over 100,” he added.

The county added $1 million and nine deputies, including a narcotics officer, to his department. He bought new Tahoes, vests, radios and guns for his men, but still it was hard to keep up.

Last year, two bar fights resulted in killings. In each case, a local man was charged with murdering an outsider.

Jalufka said the free-spending new guys have upset the local social paradigm.

“Most of the local women weren't used to being wined and dined, and these (oil field) people are making ungodly amounts of money. So all of a sudden we have conflicts because the local men couldn't get over,” he said.

* * * * *

Charlie Lobner

Young man takes certainty of high pay instead of the uncertainty of college debt.

A year ago, Charlie Lobner was playing point guard for the Kenedy Lions, working nights at a local bar and thinking vaguely about life after graduation.

The son of an electrician, Lobner, 19, planned to attend a community college and then get a university degree in electrical engineering.

But while serving drinks to free-spending pipe-liners, truck drivers and roughnecks at Coyotes, a bar in Kenedy, his plans began to change.

“They offered me and the other guys jobs after we graduated. Usually, they'd tell us we could get as many hours as we wanted,” he recalled.

So, last summer Lobner became a flow-back hand for Rock Water Energy Services. The job involves monitoring the water, oil and chemicals being flushed from newly fracked wells from Karnes to Dimmit counties.

Working long days without a break, Lobner is grossing $8,000 to $10,000 a month and has already bought a tricked-out Ford pickup and some guns.

“I have the toys. It's actually kind of weird. I know people who have gone to college and are making $40,000 a year. I don't have an education, and I'm blowing it out of the water,” he added.

Looking back, college would have been a hard, uncertain haul.

“I didn't really like getting into a mountain of debt for something I wasn't sure I wanted to do,” he added.

Going straight from high school to the oil field, working a dirty job with older men, has taken some getting used to, he said, but overall, the boom is the best thing to ever hit Karnes County.

“The older people who didn't have a whole lot are now millionaires because they had land. And you have the bad. You have the wrecks. A friend of mine was killed in one. We still don't know what happened,” he said.

* * * * *

Erica De La Garza

Familiar haunts of a one-time ghost town now seem strange to Kenedy High grad.

When Erica De La Garza graduated from Kenedy High School in 1995, she first went to college in San Marcos, and then headed to Los Angeles to chase a dream of becoming an actress or model. And on her visits home, she never thought of staying.

“When I left, it was a ghost town, and when I came back to visit twice a year, it was still a ghost town,” she said.

Then came the oil boom, and De La Garza, 35, now is working as a legal secretary in Kenedy, helping her folks with their business on weekends and sometimes tending bar for a friend.

She's also dating an engineer from Louisiana who's working off-shore.

In Kenedy, it's hard to get a seat in a restaurant and the thousands of oil field workers have warped the social dynamic.

“It's overpopulated with men. I like to run, but guys will follow you in trucks or say things to you. So I jog by the police station,” she said.

Outings to local bars also have become complicated.

“Guys get drunk and brag about how much money they make. There's a lot of fights in the bars. It's dangerous,” she said.

“This one guy went up to my roommate last week. He was bragging that he was in the $100,000 Club. They say, 'Whatever you want, put it on my tab,' because it's cheap to them,” she said.

And although things are going well, De La Garza isn't sure how long she'll stay in a town where the dining options range from Mexican cafes to a convenience store Subway.

“I was in California for so long. It's different. Coming home is nice and comfortable, but it's hard for me to be in a small town,” she said.

* * * * *

Rosendo and Anita Ramirez

For those not benefiting from the boom, life in the production area gets harder.

For six years, Rosendo and Anita Ramirez rented a three-bedroom yellow brick house close to St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Runge, where traditionally the less-well-off Karnes County residents live.

But then the boom came, and in January of last year, the rent jumped from $350 to $650 a month.

Anita, 50, works as a cook in the school cafeteria and Rosendo, 51, worked construction before he was disabled by diabetes.

“We were struggling to pay the $650, but we had no where else to go,” Anita recalled.

And then in October, Anita said, the landlord said she would soon be charging a lot more.

“She put it on Facebook. $1,000 a month or $1,500 with all bills paid,” said Anita.

After several months of anxious searching, the couple found another house in Runge for $450 a month. The paint is peeling and there are holes in the screen door, but the roof doesn't leak and the cats are comfortable.

The couple's two grown children, who help pay the bills, have the two bedrooms. Their parents sleep on a futon in the living room.

Rosendo was hospitalized recently when his diabetes flared up because he ran out of insulin for lack of money. His eyesight also is failing. Anita may have to quit work to stay home and take care of him.

Both know they're only one financial crisis away from being homeless.

“It was pretty good before. The rent wasn't that high. But the oil and gas changed everything. For most people it's a good thing, but for us, it's harder,” he said.